Gathering in Charlotte four years ago to renominate President Donald Trump, Republicans didn’t bother to draft a party platform. Evidently, they figured, “more Trump” was all the public needed to know about their second-term plans.
It probably was, although not in the way Republicans had hoped, as the voters dumped Trump and hired Joe Biden.
Americans vote for people, not platforms. But these manifestoes, however platitudinous and boring, are like a quadrennial Rorschach test of a party’s state of mind. The GOP’s decision to recycle its 2016 platform seemed calculated to paper over internal ideological rifts as well as their nominee’s frequent lapses into incoherence.
This time, party leaders plan to write a new platform for next month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. This time, having thoroughly routed traditional conservatives and the GOP’s dwindling band of dissenters from his “stolen election” fantasy, Trump can expect blind obedience from his party.
The platform writers’ unenviable task will be to distill the essence of Trumpism into something resembling a cogent governing philosophy. Considering the gibberish that gushes from their master’s mouth, that won’t be easy.
But they’ll have plenty of help from right-wing theorists, think tanks and Ivy League populists like Sens. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). Pulling these threads together is the Heritage Foundation, once a lively hub of conservative intellectual ferment and debate, now a drearily predictable organ for MAGA agitprop.
Heritage’s blueprint for a second........